How Spirit Takes Pictures

Some Clown writes "MSNBC has a great article on the details of the camera system on the Mars Rover titled How Sprit makes great photos. Apparently the high resolution images are all done with a 1-megapixel camera. All the money is in the CCD and Lens. The hardcore digital photographers in the crowd will probably find the article to be only a teaser on the technical specs, but the rest of us in the unwashed masses should find it interesting."

Comments

Specs

[nairnr]

I think it is amazing that to see what it can do. It is important to realize that the components we think about aren't always what makes the most difference. I tried out a 3Mpix camera that was utter crap because the lens on it was a small piece of plastic, then I compared it to an SLR digital camera that took stunning photos at every resolution. Quality.

It is also interesting to see how it produces color photos. Instead of using a 3 color sensor, it uses a B&W camera with 3 colour filters that recombine into a colour image. This is calibrated by a colour wheel on the rover itself.

Neat stuff

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[ActionPlant]

No, I read it; obviously the sensors in my little 1MP cam won't be anything near what's in the pancam, but I can do something about the lens. Grab an eye doc friend who can get some decent prescription-ground lenses and go for the stereo effect. I'm not sure; one might have to write a small program to make it work, but it could be fun to see the results.

The NASA guys had to start somewhere. Their biggest advantage will be the sensors, but there's no reason we can't replicate the rest. If one wanted to go all-out, it might even be feasable to use an array from a high-mp camera and configure it to use multiple sensors to produce 1px.

Damon,

This is why my 2.7mp digital SLR is still great.

[sejanus]

A lot of people see the prints from my digital SLR, a gracefully aging Nikon D1h and are astonished to learn it's from digital. Most then refuse to believe it's only a 2.7mp camera.

Near all my pictures at www.gavincato.com in the photography section are with the Nikon D1h.

The Nikon D1h has only a 2.7mp sensor, but the output is fantastic. The pixels are large, and the noise is pretty low. It's pretty much noiseless until you hit 800 ISO, and even at 1600 ISO it's significantly better than 1600 speed film.

NASA is very correct in saying the lens & sensor are important, for example most of my lenses are ludicrously expensive (often more than the camera body) and the majority of them are fixed length lenses and thus have incredible optics.

I've previously owned a Nikon D100 which had 6mp, but I found to my surprise that I preferred the output & prints from the D1h. I originally bought the D1h to complement the D100 (the D1h is a crazy fast camera designed for sports), not replace it, but after a while I ended up selling the D100.

The guys in the Canon camp have said the same thing, they much prefer the output of the 4mp Canon 1D vs the 6mp Canon 10D.

Color Russian "Photos" from before WW I

[zipwow]

His name was Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, and they're awesome. You have to remind yourself of the time period when you see them, or you'll instinctively think they're more modern:

http://www.ummagurau.com/art/russia/